Not sure how else to explain it. Without having updated the drivers any time since last fall, it is suddenly generating a blank red screen for 2-3 seconds when I wake-from-sleep, then it switches over to the Win7 login like normal.

Usual suspects:1. update the drivers (which you seem to be doing)2. make sure the monitor sleep settings are optimal and that you're set to the monitors native resolution3. try disabling the hdmi audio out4. make sure your video card and video card memory are not overclocked

If you have another monitor try that - does the other monitor still flash red when coming out of sleep - if so, that would mean a possible problem with your video card. If another monitor does not have that problem, it indicates the issue is with your video card or other system component.

Are you sure you are not comparing coming out of sleep vs coming out of hibernation? Another potential cause would be comparing before and after installing a program that is auto-starting so that logon is delayed until the program has finished loading. A good example would be a wireless driver that tries to get a valid connection before allowing you to logon.

2. Monitor power behavior is same as always, usually I turn it off with the button since it doesn't need to be in standby mode while I'm at work all day, or overnight.

3. Never seen a splash screen before, so I doubt that's it.

4. Hibernation is disabled on this machine, that was one of the first things I verified after building it last fall because I didn't want a 16GB Hiberfil.sys lurking on my 80GB SSD.

5. Never had any other issues with the graphics card.

At any rate, after Microsoft's critical updates downloaded and installed last night, I followed up with a graphics driver update to 296.10. The first thing I noticed is that the video seems to re-initialize faster than with the 275.xx driver, but I won't know if the red screen problem is resolved until I've cycled it a few times.

Who knows? Maybe the chipset is all of a sudden having problems communicating with the older firmware (if you have it) and since the 460 doesn't haven't any commands issued to it yet the default is to turn commie.

Stranger things have happened. For instance, I just recently had a problem where my failing SSD stopped my BIOS from being able to find any other SATA attached devices, and I was convinced it was a motherboard issue at first.

This system just came together in October (I ordered my hard drive less than a month before the flood price spike hit). Pretty much everything except the Antec Sonata, the GPU, and the XonarDG were shiny and new at that time, which means I should have post-8MB firmware in the Intel 320, and post-asplode-o-matic firmware in the F3.

well my MSI cyclone GTX460 is acting weird* too and I'm pretty sure I can point my finger on new gen 296.10 WHQL drivers

*: Mine just randomly stops while playing after a while. It's like stops for miliseconds every 4-5 seconds. The stops are very brief but clearly noticeable. I got "yer drivers drop dead but dont worry, it got recovered" message today... The system components are as in my sig line (read; too lazy to retype )

Make sure you uninstall all old d rivers before installing new ones.The best way is to uninstall in add a remove programs then use driver sweeper after a reboot in safe mode to eradicate all old drivers. My 560tis worked great installing drivers on top of old ones for a long time since april until the 2.95 driver then things started acting weird.Turns out Nvidia does not remove or overwrite any old files and you will have many copies of same named files in your nvida folder. Google uninstalling nvidia drivers completely,found a great guide on a evga forum that fixed me up and save alot of space on my lil 60gb ssd. Also do custom install only install what you need driver,no audio etc.Good luck